“Darren ran away once—only the once, now, he was fourteen—and, sure, I wasn’t even worried; I knew straightaway he’d gone to Kevin. He’s only devastated, Darren is. He says Kevin was the only one of the lot of us that wasn’t mental, and now there’s no point to being in this family.”
Darren was mooching around the edges of the room, picking at the sleeves of his big black jumper and doing a professional emo sulk. He looked miserable enough that he had even forgotten to be embarrassed about being there. I said, “He’s eighteen and his head’s wrecked. He’s not firing on all cylinders right now. Don’t let him get to you.”
“Ah, I know, he’s only upset, but . . .” Carmel sighed. “D’you know something? There’s ways I think he’s right.”
“So? Mental is a family tradition, babe. He’ll appreciate it when he’s older.”
I was trying to get a smile off her, but she was rubbing at her nose and giving Darren a troubled stare. “D’you think I’m a bad person, Francis?”
I laughed out loud. “You? Jesus, Melly, no. It’s been a while since I checked, but unless you’ve been running a whorehouse out of that lovely semi-d, I’d say you’re fine. I’ve met a few bad people along the way, and take it from me: you wouldn’t fit in.”
“This’ll sound terrible,” Carmel said. She squinted dubiously at the glass in her hand, like she wasn’t sure how it had got there. “I shouldn’t say this, now; I know I shouldn’t. But you’re my brother, aren’t you? And isn’t that what brothers and sisters are for, sure?”
“It is, of course. What have you done? Am I going to have to arrest you?”
“Ah, go ’way with you. I’ve done nothing. It’s what I was thinking, only. Don’t be laughing at me, will you?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it. Swear to God.”
Carmel gave me a suspicious look in case I was taking the piss, but then she sighed and took a careful sip of her drink—it smelled of fake peaches. “I was jealous of him,” she said. “Of Kevin. Always.”
This I hadn’t seen coming. I waited.
“I am of Jackie, as well. I used to be of you, even.”
I said, “I got the impression you were pretty happy, these days. Am I wrong?”
“No; ah, God, no. I’m happy, all right. I’ve a great life.”
“Then what’s to be jealous about?”
“It’s not that. It’s . . . Do you remember Lenny Walker, Francis? I went out with him when I was only a young one, before Trevor?”
“Vaguely. Great big crater-face on him?”
“Ah, stop; the poor boy had acne. It went away after. I wasn’t bothered about his skin, anyway; I was just delighted I had my first fella. I was dying to bring him home and show him off to all of yous, but, sure, you know yourself.”
I said, “I do, yeah.” None of us had ever brought anyone home, even on those special occasions when Da was supposed to be at work. We knew better than to take anything for granted.
Carmel glanced round, quickly, to make sure no one was listening. “But then,” she said, “one night myself and Lenny were having a bit of a kiss and a cuddle up on Smith’s Road, and didn’t Da come past on his way home from the pub and catch us. He was only livid. He gave Lenny a clatter and told him to get out of it, and then he got me by the arm and started slapping me round the face. And he was calling me names—the language out of him, I wouldn’t repeat it . . . He dragged me all the way home like that. Then he told me one more dirty slapper stunt and he’d put me in a home for bad girls. God help me, Francis, we’d never done more than kiss, myself and Lenny. I wouldn’t have known how.”
All this time later, the memory still turned her face a raw, mottled red. “That was the end of the pair of us, anyway. After that, when we seen each other about, Lenny wouldn’t even look at me; too embarrassed. I didn’t blame him, sure.”
Da’s attitude to Shay’s and my girlfriends had been a lot more appreciative, if not more helpful. Back when Rosie and I were out in the open, before Matt Daly found out and came down on her like a ton of bricks: The Daly young one, yeah? Fair play to you, son. She’s a little daisy. A too-hard slap on the back and a savage grin at the clench in my jaw. The kegs on her, my Jaysus. Tell us, have you had a go of those yet? I said, “That’s shitty, Melly. That really is. Five-star shitty.”
Carmel took a deep breath and flapped a hand at her face, and the red started to subside. “God, look at the state of me, people’ll think I’m getting the hot flushes . . . It’s not that I was head over heels about Lenny; I’d probably have broken it off with him soon enough anyway, he was an awful bad kisser. It’s that I never felt the same, after. You wouldn’t remember, but I was a cheeky little wagon, before that—I used to give Ma and Da dreadful back talk, so I did. After that, though, I was afraid of my own shadow. Sure, me and Trevor were talking about getting engaged for a year before we did it; he’d the money saved up for the ring and all, but I wouldn’t do it, because I knew I’d have to have an engagement do. The two families in the one room. I was only petrified.”
“I don’t blame you,” I said. For a second I wished I had been nicer to Trevor’s piggy little brother.
“And Shay’s the same. Not that he went frightened, like, and not that Da ever got in his way with the girls, but . . .” Her eyes went to Shay, leaning in the kitchen doorway with a can in his hand and his head bent close to Linda Dwyer’s. “Do you remember that time—you would’ve been about thirteen—he went unconscious?”
I said, “I try my very best not to.” That had been a fun one. Da had aimed a punch at Ma, for reasons that now escape me, and Shay had got hold of his wrist. Da didn’t take well to challenges to his authority; he communicated that concept by grabbing Shay round the throat and giving his head a good smack off the wall. Shay blacked out, for what was probably a minute but seemed like an hour, and spent the rest of the evening cross-eyed. Ma wouldn’t let us bring him to hospital—it wasn’t clear whether she was worried about the doctors, the neighbors or both, but the thought sent her into a full-on conniption. I spent that night watching Shay sleep, assuring Kevin that he wouldn’t die and wondering what the fuck I would do if he did.
Carmel said, “He wasn’t the same, after. He turned hard.”
“He wasn’t exactly a big fluffy marshmallow before.”
“I know yous never got on, but I swear to God, Shay was all right. Himself and myself used to have great chats sometimes, and he used to do grand in school . . . After that was when he started keeping to himself.”
Sallie hit her big finish—“In the meantime we’ll live with me ma!”—and there was a burst of cheers and applause. Carmel and I clapped automatically. Shay lifted his head and glanced around the room. For a second he looked like something out of a cancer ward: grayish and exhausted, with deep hollows under his eyes. Then he went back to smiling at whatever story Linda Dwyer was telling him.
I said, “What’s this got to do with Kevin?”
Carmel sighed deeply and took another dainty sip of fake peaches. The droop to her shoulders said she was heading for the melancholy stage. “Because,” she said, “that’s why I was jealous of him. Kevin and Jackie . . . they had a bad time, I know they did. But nothing like that ever happened to them; nothing where they weren’t the same after. Me and Shay made sure of that.”
“And me.”
She considered that. “Yeah,” she acknowledged. “And you. But we tried to look after you, as well—ah, we did, Francis. I always thought you were all right too. You’d the guts to leave, anyway. And then Jackie always told us you were in great form . . . I thought that meant you got out before your head was wrecked altogether.”
I said, “I got pretty close. No cigar, though.”
“I didn’t know that till the other night, in the pub, when you said. We did our best for you, Francis.”
I smiled down at her. Her forehead was a maze of little anxious grooves, from a lifetime of worrying about whether everyone within range was OK. “I know you did, sweetheart. No one could’ve done better.”
“And can you see why I was jealous of Kevin, can you? Him and Jackie, they’re still great at being happy. The way I was when I was a little young one. It wasn’t that I wished anything worse would happen to him—God forbid. I just looked at him and I wanted to be like that too.”
I said gently, “I don’t think that makes you a bad person, Melly. It’s not like you took it out on Kevin. You never in your life did anything to hurt him; you always did your best to make sure he was OK. You were a good sister to him.”
“It’s still a sin,” Carmel said. She was gazing mournfully out at the room and swaying, just a tiny bit, on her good heels. “Envy. You’ve only to think it for it to be a sin; sure, you know that. ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do . . .’ How’ll I ever say it in confession, now that he’s dead? I’d be ashamed of my life.”
I put an arm around her and gave her shoulder a quick squeeze. She felt squashy and comforting. “Listen here, babe. I absolutely guarantee you that you’re not going to hell for a bit of sibling jealousy. If anything, it’ll be the other way round: you’ll get extra God points for working so hard to get over it. Yeah?”
Carmel said, “I’m sure you’re right,” automatically—years of humoring Trevor—but she didn’t sound convinced. For a second I got the sense that, in some undefined way, I had let her down. Then she snapped upright and forgot all about me: “Merciful Jaysus, is that a can Louise has? Louise! Come here to me!”
Louise’s eyes popped and she vanished into the crowd at lightning speed. Carmel charged after her.
I leaned back into my corner and stayed put. The room was shifting again. Holy Tommy Murphy was striking up “The Rare Old Times,” in a voice that used to be flavored like peat smoke and honey. Old age had roughed up the smooth edges, but he could still stop a conversation mid-sentence. Women lifted their glasses and swayed shoulder to shoulder, kids leaned against their parents’ legs and tucked their thumbs in their mouths to listen; even Kevin’s mates brought the story-swapping down to a murmur. Holy Tommy had his eyes closed and his head tipped back to the ceiling. “Raised on songs and stories, heroes of renown, the passing tales and glories that once was Dublin town . . .” Nora, leaning in the window frame listening, almost stopped my heart: she looked so much like a shadow Rosie, dark and sad-eyed and still, just too far away to reach.
I got my eyes off her fast, and that was when I spotted Mrs. Cullen, Mandy’s ma, over by the Jesus-and-Kevin shrine having an in-depth conversation with Veronica Crotty, who still looked like she had a year-round cough. Mrs. Cullen and I got on, back when I was a teenager; she liked laughing, and I could always make her laugh. This time, though, when I caught her eye and smiled, she jumped like something had bitten her, grabbed Veronica’s elbow and started whispering double-time in her ear, throwing furtive glances my way. The Cullens never did subtle very well. Somewhere right around there, I started wondering why Jackie hadn’t brought me over to say hello to them when I first arrived.
I went looking for Des Nolan, Julie’s brother, who had also been a buddy of mine and whom we had also somehow managed to miss on the Jackie whistle-stop tour. The look on Des’s face when he saw me would have been priceless, if I had been in a laughing mood. He muttered something incoherent, pointed at a can that didn’t look empty to me, and made a dive for the kitchen.
I found Jackie backed into a corner, getting her ear bent by our uncle Bertie. I put on an agonized about-to-break-down face, detached her from his sweaty clutches, steered her into the bedroom and shut the door behind us. These days the room was peach-colored and every available surface was covered with little porcelain widgets, which argued a certain lack of foresight on Ma’s part. It smelled of cough syrup and something else, medical and stronger.